


One More Step at 6 A.M. in the Dancing Room

by hearts_kun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Anxiety, Dancing Lessons, Happy Ending, M/M, No Metaverse (Persona 5), PT Leader!Akechi, Panic Attacks, Romance, slightly ooc Ren because of reversed roles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-24 15:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15633810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_kun/pseuds/hearts_kun
Summary: A dark figure in the windows, a skilled dancer in black; a sarcastic smirk; fear, stuffing itself down your throat, and then — unknown.*Goro agrees to take some dancing classes with his friends, afraid to push them away. He gets more than he expected.





	One More Step at 6 A.M. in the Dancing Room

**Author's Note:**

> jii-ro, thanks for editing; Miya, thanks for advice!  
> dedicated to my friend Neph and my love Sei ♥  
> prompt: sure, let's go to dancing classes together, it's going to be fun, they said

He agrees. It’s going to be fun, they say, and he agrees. Dancing classes? Together? Sure.

He doesn’t raise the topic of not being able to walk more than a few meters out of the house without having a panic attack. Maybe he’s just afraid they’ll dump him if he doesn’t go. He’s been rejecting them long enough already.

Sometimes he wonders, how they managed to meet him in the first place. Everything that connects them is so thin, so unstable. They probably would fit better as enemies or rivals at best, he thinks, then blinks. He shouldn’t be having these weird thoughts.

He tries to brush them off.

Few days later, Ryuji stops by at noon to pick him up. He looks like sunshine, all fine, all glowing, and Goro feels his heart grow smaller and smaller, until it disappears completely when a stupid smirk touches the corners of his mouth. Ryuji doesn’t notice. Thank gods.

Goro has troubles breathing and a feeling that this all will end with a disaster. He does a good job pretending he’s ok and showing a honey smile whenever Ryuji looks at him.

Ann meets them near the club. She gestures vividly and tells them the dancing room is on the second floor and that she’s seen someone, a really dark figure moving in the windows, and that they were absolutely gorgeous.

“Isn’t Yusuke coming?” Goro changes the topic hesitantly, trying to hide his quickly shattering hope to talk peacefully to one of the few people who can see through his mask. Ann chirps something about Yusuke finding himself a perfect model and not being able to come and drags both Goro and Ryuji into the club, up and up through a terribly narrow staircase.

The dancing room is almost empty and full of light and fresh air; only a few people are chatting in the corner, waiting for the instructor to arrive. Ryuji punches Goro’s shoulder lightly and whispers, “Dude, I’m so excited.”

Goro nods. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it was a great idea. Not like I’m about to throw up because I haven’t left my room since holidays started.

Sarcasm blurs his mind and sight for a second, and he feels like in one of his dreams. Alone and threatened, and—

A woman with short dyed dark blue hair stands in the doorway, laughter in her eyes. She claps her hands to get some attention.

“Well, everyone, stand up, we’re about to start!”

***

When they finally get a small break, Ann flies to Ryuji faster than a butterfly, forcing him to explain how come he’s so good at dancing. Goro smiles — genuinely this time, but very tiredly. Everything feels so fragile, including himself, that it’s hard to stand straight, but at least he’s not suffocating anymore. He’s been way too focused on the dancing moves to keep drowning in panic, probably.

Or, maybe, he’s been focused on something else. Someone else.

There, in the farthest corner, the guy wearing all black keeps training even when the group takes a break; most likely, he isn’t with the group at all — his movements are too mature, too gracious, too accurate to need such basic lessons. He’s all on his own.

And that captivates Goro to the core.

He doesn’t really know how the distance between them disappears step by step until Goro finds himself standing only a few centimeters apart, uncomfortably — yet somehow rightfully — close.

Long lingering moments pass before their eyes meet, inevitably. The dancer shows a smug face and continues a difficult move. His balance is astounding; eye contact doesn’t break for a second.

“Interested?” he asks, slowly standing straight to have a break and a little chitchat.

Goro can’t lie. He _is_ interested. More than he’d like to acknowledge.

Not in dancing though, not really. More like… in him. In this guy, this dancer in black, who looks like a thief, ready to steal your heart.

“I’m Ren Amamiya,” the dancer in black says.

It takes Goro a bit more time than expected to realize he has to introduce himself back.

“Goro Akechi,” he bows and smiles — oh so sweet, sweeter than he ever did — and the dancer smirks in response, smirks in distaste, in contempt; making Goro’s mind go back into the blur.

“You’re too stiff. A marionette is made of wood, but its dance is accurate as it’s following the wise hand of its ruler; and you’re made of flesh, yet your every move is screaming ‘fake’.”

Goro feels the sickness jump back to his throat: he swallows it. Not now.

He shrugs.

“I’m with friends,” he says, as if it explains anything; and for him — it really does. It explains very well why he’s here, holding himself together, doing his best instead of lowering over a bathroom sink, barely catching breaths, somewhere far from here.

He’s really _trying_. ‘Fake it till you make it,’ isn’t that what they always say? Sometimes if you want to do the right thing, you’ve got to fool yourself a bit.

He’s surprised that this dancer in black (it’s weird to call him by his name somehow) sees through him, though. Is the mask that bad today— No, no, it’s not, it’s just that the dancer is a bit too smart. Like Yusuke, but… different, too.

“It wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more genuine, you know? What fun is it for them, hanging out with you, when you’re not really here?”

Goro twitches involuntarily, the smile fades from his face completely.

“You sound scary this way,” he says, doubt in his eyes, and the dancer in black suddenly lightens up.

“Well, and _you_ sound so much more real this way.”

Goro doesn’t think sounding more ‘real’ can help him somehow, because the real Goro Akechi is a dysfunctional mess, not ready to live. No one wants that shit. Everyone has to work on themselves, and Goro is no exclusion. Full stop.

He doesn’t get an opportunity to answer, though, because the instructor comes back, clapping her hands to gather the group. The day is promising to be long.

***

The dancer in black disappears not long after they start the second part of the class. Goro clenches his teeth for a second and feels a short pat of Ryuji’s hand on his shoulder and sees a gentle slightly worried smile.

“Sure you can make it till the end?”

He isn’t sure, but behind the worry there’s excitement and anticipation in Ryuji’s eyes; Goro nods and smiles back. He’ll make it if he has to, he knows.

This time, Ryuji isn’t really looking at him, all absorbed in showing off to Ann, and for a moment Goro, left alone and unstable in a room full of strangers, catches himself trying to be more ‘genuine’. The idea itself sounds like sand screeching between his teeth.

He tries, though. He finds something oddly satisfying in it.

The dancer comes back — of course he does. At the last thirty minutes maybe, when the sun starts setting, turning everything outside darker by the second. He tries to pass through the room to his beloved corner but freezes when their eyes meet and slowly leans on the door frame. He stays to watch.

He then catches all three of them on the first floor, leaving the club as the workers are starting to prepare the lighting for the late-night dances of a very different kind. They’re literally at the doorstep, deciding whether they want to go to someone’s place for dinner or just split up and call it a day, when he suddenly (but softy) grabs Goro’s elbow.

“Hey, were you going to grab some dinner? Mind if I join?”

And they stare at him, because they don’t know him; and Goro stares, because he feels some weakness in his faintly shaking knees. _It’s because of all the dancing_ , he tells himself, as if it’s not him, who has been trembling under the attentive eyes of — well, he’s no longer fully in black, so — Ren Amamiya. Then he realizes he’s the only one who can answer.

The shrug turns out way too awkward.

“We weren’t really, no,” he says, hoping that this… Ren person. Would just. Disappear maybe. Because Ryuji’s eyeing him extremely intensely at this point. And it’s not the time to deal with all that, definitely not after a long and busy day, no.

As the blur is coming back, turning the world into an indistinguishable mess, Goro feels someone’s cold fingers pushing a piece of paper into his own. Ren blinks and nods and takes a deep calm breath — and Goro follows him.

“Well, sorry for bothering you then. Hope we’ll meet again.”

***

The same old dancing room feels huge and spacious now that no one is here. It’s 6 a.m., too early for the classes to start, but the door is open. Goro stands in the doorway, slightly scared and constantly rubbing the ring in his pocket. Cold wind rushes through the open window and across the room into Goro’s lungs, stuffing them with fresh air.

Someone’s quick footsteps run behind his back and very soon a familiar weight of a certain human body is hanging on his shoulders. Goro breathes out slowly, and his fingers let go of the ring in his pocket. His dancer in black murmurs into the fold of his neck, hands running down from shoulders, caressing Goro’s sides. He laughs.

“Ren, we didn’t come here to—”

“I know, I know,” Ren interrupts, leading small and short kisses up his neck, to the chin, and then, finally, letting Goro go with a gentle smirk on his face.

Goro looks around the spacious room. The blur is not coming anymore, _well, not right now, at least_. He feels uneasy, but at the same time — free.

Ren takes his hand, leading into the very center, and shows at the wide and high windows, letting in all the not so warm yet sunlight. There are barely any people in the street, but cars keep going past the club, more and more of them. Goro sighs and admits, he never noticed this during group lessons. Never had that feeling of being an observer that he suddenly gets now.

Ren takes his other hand.

“Maybe just for two hours… this place is just for us. So, let’s own it, ok?”

“I’m still not sure why we couldn’t do this at my place, for example.”

“Cause your place wasn’t were we met. You know.”

“Right. Symbolism. I still hope our next anniversary dance doesn’t have to be in a public place though,” Goro feels his heart beating as he says that out loud, and Ren purrs unapologetically loudly.

He doesn’t have to remind Goro that he is not very good at being all romantic, really. But even that… turns out kind of cute. “Can your partner’s purring turn you into a sappy mess?” Goro can bet that’s the name of the Grand Plan in Ren’s diary.

They unlock their hands, and Goro leaves to go to the changing room just to come back in a dark blue dancing suit. Nothing similar to whatever he was wearing a year ago, when his first suit turned out to be white and red and “so fake that I would’ve scolded you if we hadn’t gone through this phase already”, according to Ren’s words.

Now — Ren visibly forgets how to breathe. His own blackness in clothes is a well-known fact, but the sudden change that Goro allows him to see is something more, maybe, for the first time, something deeper, that is not conveyable through words; something about how he’s going to dance today.

Slowly approaching each other through the dancing room, they don’t drop a sound. If there’s something about genuineness and sincerity that Goro learnt from Ren over the course of this year — it goes live here, now. In a way they both take steps towards each other, painfully remembering the same steps they had to take once.

One step — coming to terms with Goro’s dysfunctionality. One step — learning each other’s feelings. One step — coming out to Goro’s friends and Ryuji overcoming his suspicions to become best buddies with Ren. One step — Ren, being pushed and forced to walk away, but not walking; staying.

One more step — being here today, having lived through everything during that one long year and still being sure.

One more step — thinking of a ring, humbly waiting back in the changing room, and smiling stupidly in an unwontedly honest manner.

“Ready?”

One more step — being ready.

“I am.”


End file.
